


A Quark for Jean-Luc Picard

by Aldeen



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Dialogue-Only, Gen, Philosophical questions, Triple Drabble, What does omnipotence mean, and only Q speaks, very very short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:35:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22758646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aldeen/pseuds/Aldeen
Summary: Q is omnipotent. Jean-Luc Picard is not.
Kudos: 10





	A Quark for Jean-Luc Picard

I hear everything, every whisper, every murmur, every thought that was, is and will be thought. I hear the universe expanding, I hear it taking a deep breath and holding it for just a moment. I see everything, Picard. I see the galaxies, the structures you will never be able to see, limited by your body. I see the building blocks, the quarks and the gluons, as you call them, and I see _further_. The Planck units mean nothing to me, they are simply laws the universe has laid upon you for the audacity of being _you_. And because they mean nothing to me, I see the universe for what it is.

I can see the light moving through space, I can feel its propagation. I sense the perturbation an electron inflicts on the universe, how a proton influences _everything._

You are not different from the thing you call vacuum, Picard. You think you take up so much space, that you _matter_. But the space within your atoms, your protons and neutrons is a universe, as empty as the vastness of space around you.

Think _deeper_ Picard. You are all an abundance of nothingness. And sprinkled within this nothingness are quarks and gluons and electrons, as the stars are sprinkled in the vast space you admire so much. These are the building blocks of _your universe_. But when, Picard, when do the quarks form together in such a way to make something _alive?_

And what gives your arrangements of quarks and gluons and electrons more rights than the stars burning? The stars, who have so much more of them? What makes you more significant than the ants you step on? The bacteria you wash from your hands? Do you _mourn_ them, Picard?

And if you do not, _why should_ I?

**Author's Note:**

> Triple drabble that has it's roots in the fact that Q killed the 18 crewmembers to show the Enterprise the Borg, a fact which Picard holds against him in many fics. From this I thought about what Q's omnipotence meant and from there it developed into this little thing. Much inspiration has also been taken from a discussion at Uni, when we studied Quarks. The universe is full of nothing, the atoms are full of nothing. And I think that Q, who is not made out of the same thing as the universe, views different arrangements of this nothingness with interest, probably with the same interest as a physicist looks at the quarks and electrons. It is not without admiration or genuine curiosity, but at the end of the day Jean-Luc Picard is an arrangement of Quarks and Q has an experiment to run.  
> And as much as you can admire quarks, you do not mourn them.
> 
> Title is a reference to "Three Quarks for Muster Mark"


End file.
